It seems a little obvious to be grateful for the brain BUT have you ever really thought about it? The brain that is. Have you ever used your brain to think about the brain? It is fascinating! It controls our movements, our thoughts, our speech, even aspects of our personalities. It is fascinating, delicate, intricate, and vital. Due to a co-workers friend who has a brain injury we've been talking about the brain a lot at work recently. And we are all fascinated all over again at the way the brain works and how it controls everything. It's fascinating how it recovers from injury, what it does to protect itself and therefore the person, etc. I'm so grateful, obviously, for the brain and I am in complete awe and fascinated all over again by its contributions.
There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.
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